What Young Americans Should Really Fear

Over the past week, President Obama has been on the road making an appeal to young Americans, offering a sales pitch on lower interest rates for their burdensome student loans. What he didn’t mention, though, is the even bigger nightmare they’ll face down the road.

The president’s meme is one that USATodaypicked up on this morning, describing the plight of Millennials, their piles of debt, and their high rate of unemployment:

Today’s twentysomethings hold an average debt of about $45,000, which includes everything from cars to credit cards to student loans to mortgages, according to a PNC financial independence survey released last month. Unemployment for those 18-29 is 12.4%, well above the national rate of 8.2%; and young people face an increasingly complex global economy that is credit-driven and puts more responsibility on individuals to plan for and manage their retirement accounts.

Personal debt might be the demon pounding on some young people’s doors today, but a little farther down the road is an even bigger beast that today’s Millennials might not even know about.

On Monday, the Medicare Trustees released their 2012 report in which they described the bleak future Medicare and Social Security. Both programs are headed for insolvency with Medicare operating in the red by 2024 and Social Security running out of funds in 2033. Reform is drastically needed, yet Washington refuses to take the necessary steps to get the country’s fiscal house in order. And that means that the young Americans the president is appealing to today will have to foot the bills tomorrow.

The Heritage Foundation’s newly released 2012 Federal Budget in Pictures series paints the picture of what those bills will look like. Today, every American’s share of the debt is $36,267. By 2036, that number will be nearly $135,547, dwarfing the $45,000 in debt that young Americans are reportedly shouldering today.

Yes, Millennials have their share of fiscal struggles, but they’re taking on more of their share because of Washington’s neglect. If President Obama really wants to give them a leg up on their future, he should start ushering in reforms to entitlement spending right now.

Join The Discussion

How much dumber young people can get? They were educated by liberal teachers who want them to stay dumb from elementary school to college. They take on large amounts of debt wich is compounded by Obama's spending. He has passed all these liabilities to them, he has not created jobs for them and still want tthese idiots to vote for ineptobama. Dumber has become dumbest. With such generation of idiots the future of America is in danger.

The problem is that this president will just forgive all the Student debt (by executive order) come election time (to buy Votes). Since the government runs the College loans, and an evergrowing part of the economy, this administration will just make the taxpayers foot the entire bill.. The Administration doesn't care about debt, only how many goodies he can give the people. This is how socialism works economics 101 is thrown out the window.. Morally it might sound good, but it removes any consequences of lack of responsibility..

+1 Heritage. As a 20-something, I can definitely see this is a huge problem. Also, anyone my age who has actually read anything about social security (which is all too few) does not expect to ever receive a penny that they have paid in (myself included). They might as well just phase it out, the younger generation is already expecting it.

We also need meaningful healthcare reform – like a single payer system (please ignore the last bit about single-payer, just throwing that in to mess with you guys, but we do need actual reform).

Hey students and all of America, lets ask ourselves why the President uses his authority setting the country up with ultimatums? A good person doesn't dump consequences on the country when there are decisions that avoid consequences. A good person is proud to show his background. A good person doesn't pity himself because of the skin color he was born with and insist everyone else does also. A good person wouldn't play games with the lives of others involving others where government force shouldn't be. A good person doesn't determine what's fair to people he doesn't know! A good person wouldn't address the country to focus on a legitimate confrontation that led to a death, while ignoring people tortured, maimed and murdered across the country. A good person encourages self reliance this person doesn't. He'd rather stir up confrontations and influence all he can that it's someone elses responsibility even though totally uninvolved! He doesn't want you free, he wants America socialized, communized and racist in our own little groups with our own little kind! He disrespects the fact we are all born to think for ourselves.

It is truly discouraging that so many of these young people believe that a leader is going to bail them out. It is further discouraging that so many of them continue to buy into the college factory as their life blood instead of pursuing real marketable skills like mechanic, electrician and plumbing etc. But then again with the de-industrialization trend of our country by the global elites we are being reduced to an over educated dumbed down (paradox) impoverished nation. Will Americans be able to build or manufacture anything? Or will we serve hamburgers and take service calls?

How stupid does Obama think the American people are? We understand Obama is not "giving them a leg up, but attempting to "BUY" the youth vote in the event the universities staffs, and their dedication to the socialist ideology of Obama, is not bias enough to win their votes.

Come on Heritage, I am terribly disappointed that you would repeat the liberal line that Soc Sec is good until 2033. Surely you know Soc sec was $49m short in 2010 and THERE IS NO MONEY IN THE TRUST FUND! I RELY ON YOU FOLKS FOR ACCURACY AND FACTS.
pLEASE TELL ME YOU FIRED THE IDIOT THAT WROTE THE ARTICLE.

In the case of Social Security, if you will check Vanguard's bond funds, you will see that both of them have doubled in value in the past ten years. However the money going into Social Security doesn't get a chance to grow at all. It flows from the pockets of the people paying in to the people receiving the benefits. As for Medicare, the problem is that the US has the world's highest health care costs of any nation on Earth. What we have is a professional monopoly created and enforced by "government". Consider this fact: Without prescription laws anyone could take care of their blood pressure and cholestrol for $80 a year using the generics offered by Walmart. However, because of prescription laws, your likely costs to do this will run you about $300 a year because of office fees paid to "rent seeking" physicians and hospital labs. I am not a Republican, but a Libertarian. We understand that most of the activities of government only serve special interests, not the people of the United States of America…

Not all of us are liberally educated…I am a college student getting ready to graduate and I have had a fairly conservative education both in public school and at the university level. Let's not assume too much

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